Simple, Stand-Alone Internet Communication Devices?

ashitaka asks: "One month ago my father-in-law died leaving his wife to live alone for the first time in her life. She lives in a somewhat rural part of Japan, north of Tokyo, in an area with few neighbors. My wife is her only daughter and we live in Canada; her only son is an engineer for Fujitsu and spends many days on the road. We know she misses our kids and we try to get over to Japan as much as possible, however more than once every year or two is a stretch." What ashitaka is looking for is a simple device that can be used for video conferencing or instant messaging, that can be controlled with a remote and administered remotely. Assuming something like this doesn't exist, what would it take to bend a PC to this task? "Videophone technologies up to now have required knowledge of computer operation and Instant Messaging software or having to go through the complexities of setting up the traditional video conference. Here we are talking about a 76-year old Japanese granny who has never (and probably never will) touch anything more complex than the phone or the TV remote.

I'm looking for a device which can be administered remotely, has 6-8 large 'quick-dial' buttons and an emergency button which will try to connect through a list of contacts if required. It shouldn't look like a computer but should support connecting to whatever IM clients would be appropriate. It would be nice if it could turn on the TV when a particular Universal remote button or buttons were pressed to save Obaachan an extra step but I'm not sure if current signaling standards for TVs would support that."

Comments

Re:Administered remotely seems unlikely...

[jolyon-wagg]

I'm writing this on an N800 and - whilst not as easy to use as a laptop - It's much more convenient. Not sure about remote admin but you can hack it to add an ssh server and there's also a VNC server which I've not tried.

http://maemo.org/ is the best resource I've foud so far.

OLPC - OCPG (One Computer Per Granny)?

[pschmied]

It seems like the OLPC has the right idea with respect to how to use Linux: Simple, consistent, limited scope system designed for a uniform hardware platform.

Right now one of the biggest hurdles for Linux uptake is the critical mass problem. If you take all of the technologies loosely associated with Linux right now, there is probably plenty of critical mass for Linux to take off in a meaningful way. However, it's not really about Linux adoption, it's about vertical stacks of technologies in the Linux universe.

In short, we don't have "Linux" users. We have Linux + Gnome + Firefox + Debian system managment-isms. For programmers, it gets worse: We have Linux + GNU + X11 + Cairo + GTK + Python + Gnome APIs. Now, at each level imagine somewhere between one other and 50 other competing technologies.

If you don't believe me, feel free to respond to this post and tell me what the best development environment / language to write Linux desktop apps in is. Okay, now what's the best distribution? While we're at it, what's the best text editor? With that as a context, now tell me about UI guidelines and keychain standards.

It seems to me that, for better or worse, the OLPC project the potential to create a huge, gigantic mass of individuals with a more heterogenious understanding of what Linux "looks like" than has ever existed before.

Apple has differentiated itself by creating a cohesive environment. Apple users get angry when applications don't conform to specifications. If within the "Linux community" enough people could agree to write apps to a specification, Linux's popularity would rise and we'd see broader uptake.

Sugar could be that for a certain 90% demographic of Linux users. Imagine: A uniform display canvas, UI standards, consistent technology stack?

I don't even know that Sugar's technology doesn't suck, but at least it gives some architectural direction.

Anyway, lest some overzealous moderators accuse me of drifting dangerously off topic, I see a huge need for the sort of limited-purpose system that the original poster is looking for. My parents, my wife's parents and grandparents, (Myself?!) etc. I'm sure there are more than a handful of people here who wish they could set up a system that had some basics like video conferencing (to talk to the grandkids), web surfing, and... what else?

*The* killer feature would be having a big enough body of users that you knew patch management, upgrades, and hardware compatibility would be automatic. Maybe an OLPC with a bigger screen and keyboard for grandma's eyes and arthritic fingers would fit the bill?

-Peter

That sounds like a stock iMac

[SmoothTom]

Built in camera, software included, toss in Apple Remote Desktop 3 and it is remotely administrable. Very stable, not as subject to thousands of viruses, very decent power consumption, etc.

--Tomas

Re:That sounds like a stock iMac

[UnderCoverPenguin]

An iMac can be setup to require nothing more than then the mouse as an input device. I beleive it is even possible to to configure it to auto-start iChat on power-up.

Found it! (Sort of)

[ashitaka]

Looking at the D-Link videophone that was suggested I also found they have a stand-alone unit that connects to your TV to display the video and audio. It also has jacks for external audio input an external phone/answering machine to take voicemail messages even from video callers and comes in wired and 802.11b wireless models.

Control is through a TV-remote control device so it's close perfect. I would have to see how well it could be remotely controlled from outside but I'm sure some hacking possibilities are there.

Now to get Obaachan a broadband connection and we're in business.

Thanks all!